February 04, 2010
Never Satisfied!
Today, at the gym, a young grappler asked me a question he'd obviously been wondering about for a long time.
"How long did it take until you had grappling all figured out?"
I told him that although I started grappling (in the context of Judo) almost 30 years ago, I still didn't have grappling all figured out...
"OK, OK," he replied, "but how long did it take until you were satisfied with your ability?"
"I'm still not satisfied with my ability" was my answer.
Now I wasn't just being coy or deliberately dense. I've been a black belt in BJJ for a while now, and have trained in lots of other grappling systems. But I really am not satisfied with my ability, nor do I have it all figured out. Nor should I be satisfied!
There is ALWAYS something to work on: whether it be incorporating a new technique into your arsenal, or refining a technique that has recently stopped working for you, or working on a weak part of your game.
In fact, I can guarantee that as long as you're still testing yourself on the mat with actual sparring you're always going to have strengths and weaknesses. Pick a random subset of your grappling skills - mount escapes, half guard sweeps and triangle choke entries for example - and it's inevitable that one of those areas is going to be less developed than the other areas.
Sometimes it's reassuring to beginners to know that grapplers, fighters and competitors at the highest level also deal with this! Marcelo Garcia has areas he's weak in (at least relative to the areas that he's great at). Rickson Gracie is better at some things than others. And some aspects of Georges St. Pierre's MMA game lag behind as well.
But always having something that you suck at (or - more correctly - suck at relative to your other skills) is a good thing - now you have something to work on! If you don't know what to work on in your grappling development, then take what you're worst at and work on that! (Often your fastest progress comes from working on your weakest link).
If you're entirely satisfied with your game, and if you don't have any areas that need refining, then you haven't actually reached perfection. You've just stopped growing.
Complacency is death!
"How long did it take until you had grappling all figured out?"
I told him that although I started grappling (in the context of Judo) almost 30 years ago, I still didn't have grappling all figured out...
"OK, OK," he replied, "but how long did it take until you were satisfied with your ability?"
"I'm still not satisfied with my ability" was my answer.
Now I wasn't just being coy or deliberately dense. I've been a black belt in BJJ for a while now, and have trained in lots of other grappling systems. But I really am not satisfied with my ability, nor do I have it all figured out. Nor should I be satisfied!
There is ALWAYS something to work on: whether it be incorporating a new technique into your arsenal, or refining a technique that has recently stopped working for you, or working on a weak part of your game.
In fact, I can guarantee that as long as you're still testing yourself on the mat with actual sparring you're always going to have strengths and weaknesses. Pick a random subset of your grappling skills - mount escapes, half guard sweeps and triangle choke entries for example - and it's inevitable that one of those areas is going to be less developed than the other areas.
Sometimes it's reassuring to beginners to know that grapplers, fighters and competitors at the highest level also deal with this! Marcelo Garcia has areas he's weak in (at least relative to the areas that he's great at). Rickson Gracie is better at some things than others. And some aspects of Georges St. Pierre's MMA game lag behind as well.
But always having something that you suck at (or - more correctly - suck at relative to your other skills) is a good thing - now you have something to work on! If you don't know what to work on in your grappling development, then take what you're worst at and work on that! (Often your fastest progress comes from working on your weakest link).
If you're entirely satisfied with your game, and if you don't have any areas that need refining, then you haven't actually reached perfection. You've just stopped growing.
Complacency is death!
Labels: bjj, sparring, the mental aspect, training
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January 21, 2010
Sleepwalking Through Your Sparring
Back in my early teens, when I was infatuated with Kung Fu, I read a book purporting to describe about 50 supernatural abilities that Kung Fu masters could develop. Skills like levitation, or making your body impervious to weapons, or killing people with a poke of your fingertips...
Crazy stuff, I know! Even as a youngster I was fairly skeptical that any of this was true. The funny thing is that at least one of the skills in that book is actually quite feasible: the ability to defend yourself blindfolded. The magical Kung Fu book explained that blindfolded combat skills were the result of being able to sense your opponent's energy at a distance, and know exactly where he was and what he was going to do.
Doing this at a distance is far-fetched, but most good grapplers would be completely capable of continuing to spar if all the lights suddenly went out. And it's not anything mysterious.
It's simply that years on the mat create a high-level of touch-based sensitivity to your opponent's movements and positioning. Do this long enought and eventually you'll be able to close your eyes, hang onto an opponent's arm and have a pretty good idea what the rest of his body is doing.
Sparring with your eyes shut is actually a pretty good training method, especially if you're sparring with someone who is a lot less experienced than you. If you could completely dominate and crush your partner then neither of you will learn very much.
So what can you do instead? Some solutions to keep things interesting include limiting the techniques you're allowed to use, and also always starting in bad positions.
But you can also try keeping your eyes closed and just rolling. Flow through as many different positions and transitions as possible, trying to 'see' with your arms, your legs, and your body.
This gives your sparring partner a bit of an advantage, and simultaneously forces you to work on your sensitivity and body awareness.
Plus it impresses the heck out newbies...
bookmark this! del.icio.us | Digg it | reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | Google | StumbleUpon
Crazy stuff, I know! Even as a youngster I was fairly skeptical that any of this was true. The funny thing is that at least one of the skills in that book is actually quite feasible: the ability to defend yourself blindfolded. The magical Kung Fu book explained that blindfolded combat skills were the result of being able to sense your opponent's energy at a distance, and know exactly where he was and what he was going to do.
Doing this at a distance is far-fetched, but most good grapplers would be completely capable of continuing to spar if all the lights suddenly went out. And it's not anything mysterious.
It's simply that years on the mat create a high-level of touch-based sensitivity to your opponent's movements and positioning. Do this long enought and eventually you'll be able to close your eyes, hang onto an opponent's arm and have a pretty good idea what the rest of his body is doing.
Sparring with your eyes shut is actually a pretty good training method, especially if you're sparring with someone who is a lot less experienced than you. If you could completely dominate and crush your partner then neither of you will learn very much.
So what can you do instead? Some solutions to keep things interesting include limiting the techniques you're allowed to use, and also always starting in bad positions.
But you can also try keeping your eyes closed and just rolling. Flow through as many different positions and transitions as possible, trying to 'see' with your arms, your legs, and your body.
This gives your sparring partner a bit of an advantage, and simultaneously forces you to work on your sensitivity and body awareness.
Plus it impresses the heck out newbies...
bookmark this! del.icio.us | Digg it | reddit | Yahoo MyWeb | Google | StumbleUpon